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[HTPC4ME]

i just found out tonight why family members don't use theaterview in the house. The views are confussing them

When they go into views And They Click on ALL Artists, ALL Albums, ALL Keywords in each view they can NEVER find what they are looking for!
Tonight Gf wanted to listen to neil young, so she clicked on Audio\Artists\ it brings up level one (showing all artists is alphabetical order) then she made the mistake of clicking on ALL ARTISTS AGAIN (Which due to the way i have the view setup she would have got lucky had she not clicked ALL ARTISTS AGAIN (But By Doing so as you see in my screenshots it actually brought her to the ALL ALBUMS SCREEN, Which in return when she Typed in NEIL Y.. it brought up Her Neil Young (Which is what she wanted) But It Brought Up Neil Youngs Album Named Neil young. And She said Hunny I Can't Find Neil Young Harvest Moon CD. I Said Oh Come On Now, You Know We Have It. So i went back to server to double check if all files were tagged properly and Artist name was neil young for all our neil young albums.... Well I Then went to theater view on server to see what was going on and i realized she just kept clicking on All Artists and got herself into ALL Albums.

How can i set up theaterview so all views Do Not Show ALL From The View. Is It Possible for each view to Hide The ALL?
So Basically in my view above it would be identical EXCEPT All of The Circled ALL'S Would Not Be Available For Them To clck On .. Making it Easier To Find What They want. So If they are looking for artist, they would just click Artists\It would show alphabetically\Then the artists under that Letter, Then when they click that artists name the screen would show the artists albums, then when they clicked the artists album it would show the tracks for that album.

GF

when i goto audio theaterview when it says all artists on the first choice it makes me think i have to click it to see all artists but then i see albums... I Don't Get It?

Thanks For Any help In Clearing Up This Matter!

Is there by any chance for us to DISABLE in all Theaterviews The ALL Options?

See Pic Below!

[MrHaugen]

I totally understand your frustration! I do not have a wife, but I have friends who do the same mistake. And, a bit off topic though, there is a lot of people who unintentionally use the Play all command on the roller as well. Both of this things should REALLY be optional.

- The All items in the list is just not logical for some people. When they go in a View called "Artists" they do expect to find ALL artists. Why is the item even there I ask? Some places it might be good to have, but that is far from most times in my case.
- The Play all option on the roller is also something that inexperienced users ALWAYS use. To the big frustration of the HTPC owner.

Why is there no way to disable this two? I believe that for the average users, this two is not used often.

[lhwidget]

I'm new enough to be clicking on icons everywhere to get the hang of MC in theater view, and I agree, the first "all" icon in the views just seems to be taking up space.  I haven't figured out what to use it for yet.

Another thing that I would like would be way to unstack the artist icons, but keep the icon list in order by artist/year/album.  While this generates too many pages of icons for large collections, it's pretty nice for 100 to 300 album collections.  I suspect this is easy to do, but I haven't figured out how to manipulate theater views very well yet.

[rick.ca]

If all you ever use is a simple hierarchical system for selecting music (e.g., Genre - Artist - Album), then you may very well never have or understand the need for being able to select "All." But the views are not intended to be restricted to simple hierarchical views. They're flexible enough that any categories can be used in any sequence to make a selection. So you could have have a Genre - Style - Artist - Album - Year - Rating view from which you could make quite a number of different types of selections. A selection of "5-star Alternative Rock tracks from the 1980's" requires the ability to select "All" Artists and Albums. Similarly, using the same view to make your standard hierarchical selection requires the ability to select "All" Years and Ratings. In other words, it's a necessary means for skipping any category in the selection sequence.

I have no objection to an option being provided to remove the "All" item, but I can also understand a reluctance to do so. Understanding how the views work (and that this is how they must work), I find the presence of the "All" item perfectly natural—even in views where it's unlikely to ever be necessary. I think it would be confusing to have some views in which "All" was present, and others in which it was not. And providing an option so something works in a way more appealing to those who don't understand it in the first place may be asking for trouble. New users, for example, may get used to using such an option, and then never discover they can create much more powerful views.

Confusion would also be less likely if the List Style that shows a row of album thumbnails for each value is used. This provides much better visual feedback as to how the selection is being narrowed down, and makes it almost impossible to misunderstand the purpose of "All."

[glynor]

I find this happens most commonly if you use Theater View in Thumbnail mode.  I use Line-Up mode and it almost never happens accidentally.

[HTPC4ME]

Could you elaborate more on this Rick. Now I'm not understanding...

Confusion would also be less likely if the List Style that shows a row of album thumbnails for each value is used.

[glynor]

Could you elaborate more on this Rick. Now I'm not understanding...

He's talking about the Line-Up View Style, which is what I said too.

I think navigating the Thumbnail style view in Theater View is just confusing.  It is simply because there are too many "dimensions" to navigate.  In Line-Up View Style, you can ONLY go up or down.  You still get the visual cue benefits of the thumbnails, but your navigation is dramatically simplified by the fact that Left ALWAYS goes back up to the header, and right ALWAYS digs down into the next "tier".  All you have to worry about for choosing what you want is up/down.  Perhaps more importantly, there is dramatically less information presented on the screen at once, which I think helps cut down on information overload.

It does help to have a remote with the channel up/down buttons assigned as page up/down.  But aside from that, Line-Up View Style is where it's at.

[HTPC4ME]

ohh ok Thanks Glynor
now, Line-Up View Style

Thats the More\Toggle list view correct?

[glynor]

Yep.

[HTPC4ME]

ok.. yeah ive tried that view before, and people like to see coverarts \thumbnails.

i understand all your guys points.  for some reason its hard for them to understand and they always get lost. or biggest thing, they always say HEY i know we have this album is it not tagged? i can't find it.

[lhwidget]

Thanks glynor,
I appreciate the list view tip, it behaves a bit more naturally to me too.